The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #22
The latest and greatest in OSINT news, tools, tactics, and techniques
👋 Welcome to the 22nd issue of The OSINT Newsletter. This issue contains OSINT news, community posts, tactics, techniques, and tools to help you become a better investigator. I’ll also be sharing a few OSINT methods you can add to your toolkit, your application or script, or any of your open source intelligence needs.
🙏 It’s unbelievable that The OSINT Newsletter has over 6000 subscribers now. Nearly 150 of you have upgraded your subscription. I wanted to say thank you for sticking with me as this publication grows and for all the great feedback I’ve received thus far.
🏆 Geolocation challenge
In what city was this image taken? What are the specific coordinates?
The first person to click the “Solve” button and provide the city gets 1 month of paid access to The OSINT Newsletter. The person with the closest coordinates to where the image was taken from will also get 1 month of paid access.
🪃 In case you missed recent newsletters, here are a few links to help you catch up.
Let’s get started. ⬇️
OSINT News
📰 From Inbox to Intel: A Deep Dive into Phishing Investigation via OSINT
You can use OSINT to identify the people behind phishing emails. Ron Kaminsky writes about several open source intelligence techniques you can use to counter phishing campaigns and keep yourself and/or your organization safe.
📰 Following the Money: A Beginner’s Guide to Using the OpenCorporates API
OpenCorporates is a company data platform and database that provides access to information about corporations and companies from around the world. They also have an API. Bellincat shows how you can use the OpenCorporates API for OSINT investigations.
📰 Best Practices for Investigating Culprits of War, Human Rights Abuses, and Other Conflict
If you’re interested in investigating conflict, The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) is releasing a 16-chapter guide on how to investigate war crimes. The guide will include tips on how to use open-source research, interview victims, and verify evidence. They provide previews of a few chapters in this post.
📰 The Trojan Horse Within: Tesla’s Insider Threat Saga — OSINT/HUMINT in Insider Threat Mitigation
There was a breach at Tesla. That breach had a lot of open-source information about it. That information includes details about insider threats. Ron Kaminsky writes a detailed guide on how you can use OSINT to investigate insider threats; in this case, at Tesla.
📰 OSINT Tips: Investigating Closed Profiles
Dealing with private or partially private profiles can be difficult; however, it’s not impossible. Social Links writes about how you can use different methods to turn a private profile into several leads. This includes using information that is available, such as profile pictures, usernames, biographies, and more.
OSINT Community
📺 Using OSINT to find his apartment!
Gary Ruddell shows how he used OSINT techniques on Instagram and media to geolocate Jonny Lee Miller’s apartment in Dumbo, NY. He covers the basics of image analysis, tips for using Google Street View, and more.
🐦 Use Viber as a passive listening tool for monitoring adversaries
Viber is an alternative to WhatsApp and Signal. It has approximately 250 million monthly active users. This LinkedIn post shows you how you can use Viber as a passive listening tool to be notified when a user changes their phone number or other profile information.
🐦 Find deleted tweets easily using this new web app and the Wayback Machine
Henk Van Ess shares a streamlit tool that allows users to look up all tweets found in the Wayback Machine and filter by deleted tweets. This is an excellent tool to use now that most Twitter API-based tools have gone down with changes to the pricing structure over at X.
📖 Memetic Warfare Weekly
Memetic Warfare Weekly is a Substack that publishes insights on cyber threat intelligence, mis/disinformation, influence, and oftentimes OSINT topics. If you enjoy this newsletter, you might also appreciate the long-form, OP-ed style approach Ari uses in his publication.
🐦 Four resources for investigating users on Snapchat
Oh Shint shares 4 resources for investigations on Snapchat. This includes geolocation, reverse username, and training resources. The OSINT Combine tool is particularly interesting as it lets you analyze multiple locations at once.
✅ That’s it for the free version of The OSINT Newsletter. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this publication and independent research.
By upgrading to paid, you’ll get access to the following:
💡 2 manual OSINT methods for email and phone number
🔎 3 new OSINT tools (scripts and web apps) + 1 resource
🥸 2 tools for improving your OPSEC
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